1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cover member that protects an in-vehicle system, such as an engine, and relates to a sticker that is affixed to the cover member.
2. Description of Related Art
An in-vehicle system, such as an engine, is installed in an engine compartment of the vehicle. Such an in-vehicle system is provided with a cover member. The cover member is designed to absorb noise generated in the in-vehicle system and to protect the in-vehicle system. For example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2007-230312 (JP-A-2007-230312) discloses a cover member that protects the engine, in which the engine is an example of the in-vehicle system.
The cover member is located at a position where a user can visually recognize this cover member when the user opens a hood of the vehicle to look the engine compartment. There has thus been an increasing trend to use a cover member for vehicles, which has an aesthetic appearance with a variety of designs on its top surface where the user can visually recognize. The design made on the cover member is typically formed with a convex pattern that bulges from the top surface of the cover member. In addition, one of the recently-known cover members has a colored convex portion to improve its aesthetic appearance. It should be understood that the design made on the cover member includes, for example, a logo mark that identifies the manufacturer of the vehicle, and characters that represent the name of technology.
There can be a case where cover members themselves have an identical shape, but have different designs on their respective top surfaces. In such a case, these cover members require different manufacturing processes. This creates a need for preparing many types of molds to be used for manufacturing the cover members, and thus causes an increase in manufacturing costs of the cover members.
Therefore, a method of manufacturing plural types of cover members having different designs on their top surfaces, which prevents an increase in manufacturing costs, has been considered in recent years. More specifically, in this method, a cover member is manufactured such that the cover member is formed with, on its top surface, a concave portion on which a first design is made (hereinafter referred to as “aesthetically-designed concave portion”). In turn, in this method, an additional cover member is manufactured such that the additional cover member has a second design, different from the first design, on its top surface. In this case, as illustrated in FIG. 8A, a sticker 110 on which the second design is made is affixed to the top surface of a cover member 100. In conjunction with this, the sticker 110 is affixed to the cover member 100 such that the sticker 110 covers an aesthetically-designed concave portion 101 that is formed on the top surface of the cover member 100. This eliminates a need for preparing plural molds, and thus enables plural types of cover members to be manufactured with different designs on their respective top surfaces, while preventing an increase in manufacturing costs of the cover members.
The sticker 110 includes a sticker body 111 and an adhesive layer 112. The sticker body 111 is made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The adhesive layer 112 is provided on a reverse surface of the sticker body 111. The adhesive layer 112 is formed on the entire reverse surface of the sticker body 111. The adhesive layer 112 is, for example, a double-faced tape.
The cover member 100 with the sticker 110 affixed thereto was placed in a high-temperature atmosphere to conduct an evaluation test of heat resistance. The evaluation test showed the following problems: At the point in time when a certain period of time elapsed since the start of the heat resistance evaluation test, a part of the sticker 110, which faces the concave portion 101, was recessed toward the concave portion 101, as illustrated in FIG. 8B.
During the heat resistance evaluation test, the sticker body 111 was partly recessed. This indicates that in the vehicle on which the cover member 100 is mounted, the sticker body 111 can possibly be recessed. If the phenomenon, in which the sticker 110 is recessed, occurs in the vehicle owned by the user, this phenomenon could cause deterioration of the aesthetic appearance of the cover member 100, and therefore, could, possibly cause user's discomfort. These problems can occur not only on the cover member for the engine, but also on any cover member for an in-vehicle system other than the engine installed in the engine compartment.